Victoria’s Secret angel Sara Sampaio has spoken out about the “bullying and abuse” in the fashion industry, claiming photographer Terry Richardson has been used as a “scapegoat” for what is a systemic problem.

Victoria’s Secret angel Sara Sampaio has spoken out about the “bullying and abuse” in the fashion industry, claiming photographer Terry Richardson has been used as a “scapegoat” for what is a systemic problem.

Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon, the 26-year-old Portugese-born model admitted she still faces pressure from stylists and photographers to strip naked during photoshoots, despite being at the top of the industry.

“I’ve definitely had throughout my career a lot of times that I’ve got pushed into some things I didn’t want to. Or things that people are like ‘oh that’s just part of the business’,” she said.

The 10-year industry veteran posted to Instagram last month revealing an experience with French men’s magazine Lui. She claimed despite a clear agreement there was to be no nudity, she had been “aggressively pressured” into stripping down.

She also said the publication had assured her it would not use images showing “accidental exposures”, but then proceeded to publish the images, including one on the magazine’s cover.

Sampaio added this was not an isolated experience, citing many occasions arriving on set when a photographer or stylist would “pressure, cajole or demand that I pose nude because I had done it in the past”.

“Many times, I was showed nude images of myself as examples to coerce me into posing nude, and whenever I stood my ground and refused, I was criticised and judges as being difficult,” she told her 5.9 million followers.

Sampaio revealed she was pursuing legal action against Lui, saying she hoped to prevent the situation from happening again to her or to others.

Speaking at the summit, she said speaking out on Instagram was was a fine line for models, who relied on social media engagement to book jobs and command top dollar.

“Being vocal about these things doesn’t really get a lot of engagement,” she said. “A selfie might get 400,000 likes and if I post a post about [an issue], I might get 50,000.

“At the end of the day, it’s part of my job to have big numbers on social media and you want to make sure those are not screwed up, so you kind of have to think about not posting too much of that, but I feel this part of my community, it’s my duty to do so.”

Sampaio said she hoped more people would start speaking out to hold the industry more accountable. Last month, photographer Terry Richardson was black-listed after allegations of sexual assault and harassment surfaced against him.

However, Sampaio accused the fashion industry of being “hypocritical” in their condemnation of the famous fashion photographer, who was dropped from labels like Vogue and GQ.

“Everyone knows it’s happening, no one does anything about it,” Sampaio said.

“Everyone knew about Terry Richardson and all these people looked the other way and kept working with him. And now this whole Weinstein thing happened and all of a sudden yeah, it’s, ‘let’s use him as a scapegoat.’

“That’s kind of hypocritical. You guys knew this was happening. You still chose to work with him year after year and you’re putting these girls into a bad situation.”